“Not long ago, Republicans identified themselves as the enemies of big government. It is ironic then that they want to resurrect the CCC, a program pioneered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. If they go along with the president’s plan, the party of limited government will be breathing new life into a long dormant bureaucracy.”

Washington Examiner

The fact that red states are being hit the hardest by retaliatory tariffs “is not accidental. Donald Trump brought his belligerent brand of politics to trade, insisting that he could force U.S. trading partners to submit. With their responses, the EU and other countries have made a different point — that in an interdependent global economy, economic aggression affects everyone, even the perpetrator, so that reasonable compromise is manifestly preferable to conflict.”

Salon

“Trump badly needs to lay out his endgame for these ill-conceived trade fights. Otherwise, we risk a situation in which the logic of hitting back whenever you've been hit can lead the conflict to spin out of control, with all parties completely losing sight of the original grievances.”

though perhaps with an appropriately Republican upward-redistribution twist depending on how much aid goes to big agribusiness entities).”

New York Magazine

“It’s a good thing that remnants of all those New Deal programs are still floating around out there. Trump can now latch on to them as a reminder of what the federal government did back when it actually believed its primary mission was to help people.” Mother Jones

“Not long ago, Republicans identified themselves as the enemies of big government. It is ironic then that they want to resurrect the CCC, a program pioneered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. If they go along with the president’s plan, the party of limited government will be breathing new life into a long dormant bureaucracy.”

Also worth noting: “International trade markets are not easy to rebuild. Once the Chinese give up U.S. agriculture, there’s no telling how long it will take for them to return to our markets—if they ever return at all. This would leave the Trump administration with two unsavory options: Provide huge agriculture bailouts year over year indefinitely, or allow thousands of U.S. farms to go belly-up as a direct result of its trade policies.”

The Weekly Standard

Counterpoint: “Free marketers are hardly a majority of the electorate. They’re probably not even a majority of the Republican Party… those formerly ‘blue wall’ states that went his way two years ago – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – are first at the trough for the spoils of office. A trade war will help Trump in those places, and presumably redound to the benefit of Republicans.”